The risk of blackouts this winter has increased compared with a year ago, according to National Grid.

It says the closure of some power stations will have left spare capacity on the system at just 1.2%, the worst for a decade.

It has secured extra supplies by paying tens of millions of pounds to have several plants on standby and by asking some industries to switch off power.

The move means overall spare capacity is now expected to be around 5%.

“It’s clear that electricity margins for that coldest, darkest half hour of winter are currently tighter than they have been, due to power stations closures”, says Cordi O’Hara, National Grid’s Director of Market Operations.

To ensure the lights stay on, for the second year running, National Grid will pay firms like Centrica and SSE to keep power plants in…

The BBC puts the usual spin on this, the Plants are closing due to the EU & “Low Prices”.
What, no mention of the unlevel playing field, no mention of the Priority given to Wind & Solar, no mention of subsidies, no mention of running Plants when they are not required at considerable cost.

The problem will come to a head faster if there is some other unexpected event or two. It might be a severe flu season, a strike, a cyber attack or a combination of events that are hard to manage even when there is a good margin. Aren’t El Nino conditions supposed to bring us bad winters? Apart from a lack of wind, cold equals severe winter bug outbreaks.

The plan seems to be to just buy a way out of trouble by paying major industrial users to shut down or reduce demand. They even get paid whether they have to shut down or not, by agreeing to be on the list to do so if/when necessary.

That’s after any attempt to save the grid supply from failure by using emergency diesel generators.

I guess the problem with driving major industrial users of electricity out of the country, is that there then aren’t so many of them left to pay to not use electricity. But.. the idea of a bigger interconnect across the North Sea means that they could pay companies in foreign countries to not use electricity. Genius! 🙂

Could be a plus side to this, in the event of problems, not only will it be the Green Tory’s who connived to create the problem, who will have to take the fallout. But it could also have the effect of shining a light on the nonsense of Renewables 🙂

Let’s see how many people die during cold spells this winter when the National Grid runs out of paper. Better yet, maybe remind the NG people, the BBC, The Guardian and all those pushing renewables of every death and ask them if they are pleased.